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How you can Visit Key West with Kids

If you feel Key West is simply too hedonistic for families, reconsider. This compact city using its laid-back, barefoot attitude is the best spot to bring the children where they’ll be permitted to become, well, kids.

What to Do

Hit the shore. Keys beaches can seem to be a little limited in comparison to the Caribbean’s wide stretches of sand, however a pail along with a shovel, or perhaps a boogie board, are sufficient to help keep any kid happy for hrs. For gear rentals and food trucks, mind to Smather’s Beach. If you wish to experience a little bit of history and check out barrier along with other awesome flotsam which has washed ashore, Fort Zachary Taylor is only the factor. Higgs Beach-Astro City Playground is really a postage-stamp-size beach having a nearby playground. In the playground you are also only three blocks from the Southernmost Point for that obligatory Key West photo-op.

Go to a remote island. Among the U.S.’s most remote nature, Dry Tortugas National Park hits all of the marks with regards to awesome. First, to get at this park 70 miles from the coast of Key West, you need to have a ferry or, better still, a seaplane. Second, there’s Fort Jefferson to understand more about, including cannons, a lighthouse, a moat, and a pair of,000 archways and five spiral staircases ideal for a legendary bet on hide-and-seek. Third, in the pristine beach you are able to snorkel among tropical fish that gather along pilings and also the outdoors from the moat. Tip: If your folks are vulnerable to motion sickness, spend the Dramamine for children 30 minutes before boarding the ferry.

Bike the Heritage Trail. The Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail is really a flat bike path that extends over 70 miles. In Key West, a brief stretch from it hugs beautiful Smather’s Beach along A1A and beyond with gorgeous views from the Atlantic. Another kid-friendly place is directly across A1A in the bike path: the Fort East Martello Museum, where tykes can climb to the top citadel tower, take a look at shipwreck exhibits, and check out “junk art” sculptures.

Watch the sunset at Mallory Square. Mind lower to Mallory Square for nightly street theater performances that can start 5 pm and finish once the sun sinks in to the sea. Where else are you able to visit a slack rope master juggle knives or perhaps a unicyclist ride around with lit torches? Some performances tend to be more kid friendly than the others, so keep moving should you hear jokes tailored for adults.

Wet-Day Attractions

Find out about the Keys’ Ecosystem. If your passing shower dampens the shore vibe at Fort Zachary Taylor, pop in to the Eco Discovery Center, where everybody can find out about the unique Keys habitats. You will find interactive exhibits and tropical fish inside a 2,500-gallon tank.

Browse the aquarium. Touch tanks where one can visit a live conch shark and stingray feedings and rehabilitated ocean turtles in the typical aquarium ante in the Key West Aquarium.

Flit using the Butterflies. The Important Thing West Butterfly & Nature Conservancy is a superb spot to escape heat or even the rain as it is totally glass enclosed, air-conditioned, and superbly landscaped. Everyone will have to be careful where they step and turn into relatively quiet, but everybody will contain question while being encircled by butterflies.

Possess a fun lesson in history. Between pirates, ghosts, shipwrecks, and hurricanes, history is not boring in Key West. Learn about it in the Key West Museum of Art & History within the Custom House.

Parents Require a Vacation Too

Find your Zen. Parents can provide one another a rest in the kids striking the stunning spas of Key West. Should you have only a couple of hours free, go for an in-town health spa like Sea Wellness Health spa & Salon. Or your family can produce a day’s going to Sunset Key, only a 10-minute ferry ride away, to savor the sandy beach in the Westin Sunset Key Cottages while you receive a treatment in the Health spa at Sunset Key. Beach passes can be found in the Westin concierge desk beginning at 8 am (passes are restricted). The $40 per person each day pass features a towel, chair, umbrella, and also the ferry ride back and forth from Key West. Children under 4 have the freedom.

Yoga around the beach. For early-rising families, park the children around the sand (supervised, obviously), when you do Yoga around the Beach underneath the shade of pine trees at Fort Zachary Taylor. Courses are available every day at 8:15 am.

Sip a sundowner. Who states you cannot have a drink with all of those other adult revelers? The road between bar and restaurant in Key West is fuzzy. Most are open-air, have live music, and serve food, such as the Sunset Pier in the Sea Key Resort & Health spa. Key West is among the couple of places where it’s not necessary to lose out on live music since the kids ought to be during sex when the party starts. So sip a sundowner while your children come with an early dinner and everybody enjoys the party atmosphere.

Insider Tips

Fly directly interior and exterior Key West Worldwide Airport terminal (EYW). There is no gangway, so you will have the decidedly old-school experience with walking from the plane via stairs like you are obama coming on Air Pressure One. What you are able save in airfare flying into Miami or Foot. Lauderdale you’ll finish up paying for a vehicle rental that’ll be an encumbrance when you achieve Key West. As well as you will save yourself the 4-hour journey from Miami, on a single-lane U.S. 1, in traffic.

Rent bikes, not really a vehicle. Key West is chock-a-block with bike rental firms that brings bikes for your hotel and get them in the finish of the stay and can include from kids’ seats to helmets. You’re permitted to bike around the pavement everywhere in Key West except Duval Street, so kids can remain safe from the street.

Where you can Eat

Two recommended food groups are ubiquitous within the Conch Republic and should be sampled: fried sea food (including conch fritters) and Key lime cake. Many restaurants in Key West are outside-only and have plentiful outside seating-meaning kids do not have to sit still, they frequently have some fun surroundings to understand more about, and also the kids’ noise is drowned out by live music, raucous adults, and also the crowing of resident roosters. Cats, too, are recognized to wander through outside eateries, even at cloth-napkin spots.

The wait for table at Blue Paradise could be lengthy at breakfast, lunch, or dinner, there is however a ping-pong table and often an active band to help keep everybody entertained.

Go ahead and take awesome fish sandwiches and conch fritters with house-made cocktail sauce to visit from B.O.’s Fishwagon, or get your meals at an open-air picnic table only at that cool outside restaurant and bar. The ramshackle establishment having a damaged-lower truck out front comes with an only-in-Key West feel.

Basically a food truck with tables as well as an indoor bar, Garbo’s Grill creates an excellent lunch stop. It had been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives, therefore the key to their Umami hamburger and Korean BBQ tacos is certainly out, but mind here early and also you will not need to wait too lengthy for gourmet-meets-grunge.

Conch Republic includes a marina-side location that can not be beat, and there is live music every single day.

The right place hitting after sunset at Mallory Square, El Meson de Pepe offers al fresco dining and live Cuban music. A Cuban tapas menu likewise helps feed picky eaters.

For dessert or really whenever, Kermit’s Key West Lime Shoppe is essential for Key lime cake, or even better, frozen Key lime cake drizzled with chocolate.

Places to stay

The rule of remaining somewhere having a pool to help keep the children happy applies in Key West as anywhere. Try not to limit you to ultimately resorts, because many smaller sized qualities have pools too. If you’re visiting during the cold months, you will want so that the hotel pool is heated as winter days can nonetheless be awesome to this point south.

The Ambrosia Key West can hold bigger family groups in cabanas and they’ve two small heated pools the dip pool is ideal for toddlers. Gleam spa for adults. A great choice for families preferring a far more intimate feel.

For families on a tight budget, Authors Key West will do the job. They’ve rooms that sleep three (in a single queen bed and something twin bed) for just $220 in peak season. While being easily located near to the action in Old Town, they’re particularly not really a property for spring breakers, and visitors under 16 stay free-plus there is a small pool.

The Casa Marina, A Waldorf-Astoria Resort is around the largest private beach in Key West having a pier to obtain beyond the rocks around the shore and also to a sandy bottom. Additionally, it includes a babysitting service.

Found on Sunset Key, a ten-minute ferry ride from Key West proper, the main one- to four-bed room cottages in the Sunset Key Cottages have kitchens, and there’s a personal beach and pool.